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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329942">the wind just stripped me bare</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/redwillawrites/pseuds/redwillawrites'>redwillawrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Female Alphonse Elric, Female Edward Elric, Fluff and Angst, Male Winry Rockbell, Redemption, Restored Alphonse Elric, Saving the World, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:07:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329942</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/redwillawrites/pseuds/redwillawrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When El Elric is taken back into the nothingness beyond the Gate against her will, she makes a terrible choice in order to escape, and receives the second chance of a lifetime.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>156</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Choice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title is from Hootie and the Blowfish's song "Time"...if you listen to it you'll probably get a good idea of where this is going thematically. </p><p>Inspired by gems like: <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/6226465/chapters/14265793">Reverti Ad Praeteritum</a> by Batsutousai and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/16659134">Satellite</a> by SpicyReyes and of course, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/744971">Redo</a>  by StillNotGinger10</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world beyond the Gate is whiter than white. Its endless nothingness given form.</p><p>In that terrible blankness the bruise-like shadows that wreath the grinning, amorphous figure of the Truth and the looming grey of the Gate are stark.</p><p>El’s stomach turns.</p><p>She’s had nightmares that start like this what feels like a hundred thousand times before. But this is no nightmare.</p><p>This is too much like Hell to be anything other than reality.</p><p>The pretty middle-aged woman in front of her is Heba Sinclair. The Phase Alchemist.</p><p>Her husband, a talented alchemist in his own right, and three children all died ten years ago in a lab accident. Sinclair got her State Certification soon after, obsessed, according to Mustang, with finishing her late husband’s work.</p><p>El remembers skimming the report and passing the assignment over in favour of the more grizzled and more dangerous Cutting Alchemist.</p><p>That was stupid of her.</p><p>She should know better than to underestimate a tiny grief-stricken woman.</p><p>“Welcome, Alchemist,” says the echoing voice of the Truth. “And welcome back, little prodigy.”</p><p>“Where are we?” says Sinclair.</p><p>Her voice is shaking. So are her hands.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“Are you displeased?” coos the Truth. “You wanted the Gate to be opened. I opened it.”</p><p>El turns.</p><p>Sinclair’s Gate looms behind them like the doom of Damocles, open just a crack, with tendrils of black-purple smoke like misshapen arms licking at the edges.</p><p>“I wanted to go through! To the other side! I need to go back!” Sinclair snaps.</p><p>“Wait!” El warns. “Don’t!”</p><p>“I want things to change! I <em>need</em> them to!”</p><p>The tentacles behind them writhe and the Gate is prised open a little bit more.</p><p>The Truth grins.</p><p>“You alchemists are all the same. I want. I want. Learn to sing a new song. But whatever. What can you offer then? For your Toll?”</p><p>“Toll?”</p><p>“Shut up!” El says, getting shakily to her feet and grabbing Sinclair by the wrist. “Don’t say another word. Let the circle go. Let the energy dissipate. It’s not too late!”</p><p>Truth wags one shadow-wreathed finger at her.</p><p>“Tsk. Tsk,” it says. “This isn’t your bargain, Elinor Elric. Not just yet.”</p><p>Sickly purple light erupts from the nothingness under her feet.</p><p>El feels her heart stutter in her chest.</p><p>She’s standing at the epicentre of the least balanced array for human transmutation she’s ever encountered.</p><p>She’d done a better job balancing a circle when she was still an untrained brat.</p><p>“What the fuck?” she murmurs. “How…?”</p><p>The memories return to her in fits and starts, like a damaged film reel.</p><p>She was supposed to meet Mustang. He’d called to say he’d be late.</p><p>Sinclair had approached her at the bar while she was waiting. Asked her about her most recent paper on the application of molecular thermodynamics in alchemy. She’d bought her a drink…</p><p>“Oh, you bitch!”</p><p>Sinclair shrugs her off and takes a step closer to the Truth. Her big brown eyes are wide and bloodshot and there’s a glint of something manic in their depths.</p><p>El has to stop this somehow.</p><p>Alchemists who mess with human transmutation almost always end up destroying themselves. The ones who make it out alive are always damaged.</p><p>Everything has a price, but the price is blood and guts and things you never expected to have to sacrifice. And the results were never what you’d hoped. Were never what you could live with.</p><p>El is the only one who’s ever come away relatively unscathed, and that’s just because she got burned enough times to be wary.</p><p>Heba Sinclair has clearly never been burned.</p><p>She’s smart. About in the same bracket of genius as Isaac McDougal, probably. And arrogant. And desperate.</p><p>“I need to go back,” she tells the Truth. “October sixth nineteen-ten. Before just before three o’clock in the afternoon. I was out shopping when the house collapsed. I only need a few minutes to pull them out. After that you can have my current self. And I brought a sacrifice.”</p><p>“Shit,” says El.</p><p>The Truth hums.</p><p>“Do you think that that’s a fair trade, Alchemist?”</p><p>“More than fair,” Sinclair says confidently. “Forty years of life for forty minutes of time.”</p><p>El studies the array pulsating around her feet.</p><p>Despite its instability it’s a pretty comprehensive circle. Sinclair’s done her homework. But bending the laws of the universe isn’t something that the Truth can allow.</p><p>Through the crack in the Gate El can see the lidless white and black eye and deep within it…</p><p>Two little blond girls with their bloody fingers pressed to an elegant equation drawn in blue-white chalk.</p><p>Suddenly El knows why she’s standing before Heba Sinclair’s Gate even though she’s not the one in control of the array.</p><p>Sinclair has opened the door.</p><p>Truth can’t close it until the energy from the circle kills them both, or they go through the door and arrive out the other side.</p><p>That’s why the circle isn’t balanced.</p><p>It’s a trap.</p><p>But not just for her.</p><p>The Truth has to obey it’s own rules.</p><p>The Truth is watching her, its grin twisting up at the corners.</p><p>“What do you think little prodigy?” the echoes within the Gate whisper. A tendril of smoke swipes along her neck and the shell of her ear. “Will you open the door again and allow yourself to be unmade?”</p><p>El has never used a Gate that wasn’t her own, or Al’s, but she has an idea of what the Truth is tempting her with.</p><p>Survival. Returning to her sister and the world.</p><p>The door is open on both sides.</p><p>All El has to do, is pass through it.</p><p>It’s more than enough rope to hang herself with.</p><p>All El has to do…as if a bargain with the Truth is ever that simple or clean.</p><p>The arrays are taking shape in her head. One and then another. She’ll need both of them, in quick succession and even a single fuck up could unravel the universe.</p><p>But no fucking pressure.</p><p>“Forty seconds,” El says.  </p><p>It’s all she can afford, if she’s going to make it out of here.</p><p>“As you like,” the Truth laughs. “Let’s see if you can make it, shall we?”</p><p>“Fuck you,” El growls, clapping her hands together and slamming them onto the Gate.</p><p>The air rings, a sound like a struck bell, and the Gate flies open, the black tendrils curling around El, dragging her in. And past her to where the Phase Alchemist is still standing.</p><p>“No!” she screams. “No! Let me go! This isn’t what I wanted! This isn’t fair!”</p><p>“Who are you to decide what is fair?” laughs the Truth. “This is equivalent.”</p><p>El dares a quick glance over her shoulder as she’s dragged into the Eye.</p><p>Heba Sinclair is already flaking away into fizzles of red lighting. The energy from her soul siphoned away to fuel the first part of this delicate reaction.</p><p>El closes her eyes for a moment.</p><p>Once again, she’s become a killer, however inadvertently.</p><p>Her atoms split and scatter as she’s dragged through the Gate, reassembling on the other side of it as she passes through Heba Sinclair’s Gate and into Elinor Elric’s.</p><p>Her younger self is screaming in the centre of the Eye.</p><p>Her brain is flooding with information about soul alchemy, human transmutation and the laws of the universe. More information than she’ll ever use or remember. All of it too fast, and too much.</p><p>It’s white-hot overwhelming agony worse than any other pain she’s ever felt.</p><p>It’s a brand on her soul.</p><p>El only has forty seconds though.</p><p>She ducks through the Gate.</p><p>Past the screaming Elinor and out, into another endless expanse of white.</p><p>There.</p><p>Alice is on her hands and knees in front of yet another open Gate, reaching out.</p><p>“Sister!” she screams. “Sister!”</p><p>El runs.</p><p>She crosses the nothingness between them and wraps herself around Alice.</p><p>“I’ve got you, little sister,” she says into Al’s hair. “It’s going to be alright.”</p><p>“El,” she sobs. “I think…I think my body’s gone…I thought I saw Mom…”</p><p>El glances over her shoulder to where a figure wreathed in shadows is wearing her sister’s face, a parody of a grin stretching her mouth wide and terrible.</p><p>“It’s okay,” El says. “I’m putting it back now. I’m sorry Allie. I think this is gonna hurt.”</p><p>El holds the second array steady in her mind. And claps her hands.</p><p>She can feel the Gate she’s using. Sinclair’s. Breaking down. The crack in the world sealing shut as the doors of the Gate slam closed before they started to unravel.</p><p>In her arms, Alice’s small frame starts to dissolve again as well, cracking blue and white and gold with alchemical energetic discharge.</p><p>“Twenty seconds, little prodigy,” Truth cackles as it loses it’s Alice-skin and becomes light and shadow again.</p><p>El grits her teeth and holds the transmutation. All the way to the end.</p><p>She’s done fucking with her sister’s body and soul. If she runs out of time for herself…well, so be it.</p><p>When the last spark fizzles out, Al’s Gate slams shut with a bang and vanishes.</p><p>El staggers to her feet.</p><p>There’s only one Gate left open.</p><p>Her younger self is still screaming in the centre of the Eye.</p><p>Her leg flaking away inch by inch and molecule by molecule. Her hands clapped over both ears as if that will help muffle the flow of information.</p><p>“Eight seconds,” Truth taunts as El grabs little Elinor.</p><p>She has no idea how the fuck to fix this part she realizes.</p><p>“Seven.”</p><p>There’s no way there’s enough of a Toll to pay for herself and young Elinor to exist in the same world.</p><p>“Six.”</p><p>She can feel little Elinor within herself. Around herself.</p><p>“Five.”</p><p>“I can’t!” screams Elinor. “Make it stop! No more!”</p><p>“Four.”</p><p>There isn’t an answer. There’s only one Gate here and they need to pass through it.</p><p>“Three.”</p><p>What does she choose?</p><p>“Two.”</p><p>What can she live with?</p><p>“One.”</p><p>One is all. All is one.</p><p>“Forgive me,” El sobs.</p><p>She claps her hands together.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Aftermath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>El lurches into graceless consciousness with a gasp.</p><p>Everything hurts from the soles of her feet to the wings of her eyelashes.</p><p>She tries to lever herself up on one elbow. Missing her automail as her flesh arms shake under the strain.</p><p>God, she’s weak. She’s trembling like a leaf and her head…well the less said about that the better.</p><p>Where…?</p><p>“Sister!”</p><p>Something small, light and blond crashes into her, and El embraces it automatically. Fighting for balance.</p><p>Alice is a warm weight in her arms and something tight and worried in El’s chest unknots. Her sister is fine. Shaken up and sobbing, but more importantly, alive and uninjured.</p><p>Behind her, waiting in the middle of the array is the twisted mish-mash of the failed homunculus. It’s all skin and bone and blood leaking into the grooves of the stone floor.</p><p>Its desiccated head lolls back on it's too-thin neck. It’s withered, broken arm is reaching for them.</p><p>It’s already dead again. If it ever really lived. And it’s remains smell like decay and ozone.</p><p>El tucks Al a little closer to her chest so that she won’t have to look at it yet, and rocks her sister as she cries.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” El murmurs into her hair. “Gods, Alice, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”</p><p>“Mom…?” Alice asks, her voice choked and wet.</p><p>El shakes her head.</p><p>“It’s not her. It’s not anyone.”</p><p>Alice fists her small hands in El’s shirt and takes quick shuddering breaths for long minutes.</p><p>When Al finally tips her head up her small face is set and serious.</p><p>“Sister,” she asks. “What happened to us?”</p><p>“I—"</p><p>El’s voice gets caught in her throat.</p><p>What can she say? How can she explain what happened? How can she explain what she did? How can she justify any of it to the ten-year-old centre of her universe?</p><p>“You’re so much older,” Al whispers. “And I…I think I disappeared for a minute.”</p><p>“You did,” El admits. “It was the scariest twenty seconds of my life.”</p><p>“Mine too.”</p><p>Al’s voice is small and tremulous and El’s heart breaks a little.</p><p>“We need to get this cleaned up,” El says. “Before we activate it again by accident. Help me up?”</p><p>Al blanches and scrambles to her feet.</p><p>El hauls herself upright, using her sister’s skinny shoulder as a crutch. She surveys the mess of chalk, human remains, and broken glass that make up the mess on the floor.</p><p>“Can you break a section of the array for me?”</p><p>Alice gets the broom from the corner and sweeps the nearest edge of the nearest ring away. Breaking the circle and rendering it inactive.</p><p>“What are we going to do about…?”</p><p>El chews on the inside of her lip.</p><p>The creature of skin and bones deserves a proper burial. What happened wasn't it's fault. Instead, El claps her hands and deconstructs it to the molecular level.</p><p>She claps again and the foundation of the house runs like water. It envelopes the blood, chalk and dusty remains in a pocket of bedrock and, as El concentrates, sinks them far beneath the house. </p><p>Once again, the floor is bare and clean.</p><p>Her biggest mistake tidied away into a dark closet with no one the wiser.</p><p>El thinks she might throw up. Alice doesn’t look much better.</p><p>“Let’s get out of here,” El croaks.</p><p>Al helps her up the stairs. They lock the door to Hohenheim’s lab and study behind them, as if that can put a barrier between them and their failure.</p><p>El drags Al out to the front porch, snagging a blanket as they go.</p><p>They settle on the porch swing together and for a moment El thinks that will be that. But after a long while Al says: “Your leg is automail,” she says.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“And you’re an adult.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“And you were there with me, in that place. You saw…”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“We were wrong. We messed it up.”</p><p>El swallows hard and then says: “We were wrong, but we didn’t mess up the way you’re thinking. Alchemy can’t bring the dead back to life. Ever. We might have been able to make a body, but we could never make a person. It’s impossible.”</p><p>“So, the reaction…rebounded?”</p><p>El shakes her head.</p><p>“Not exactly,” she says. “We…we touched something we should never have tried to meddle with, and for making the request, the Gate took a Toll.”</p><p>“Toll. I saw your leg disappearing…”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“My body...it unravelled.”</p><p>Alice shudders and El rubs at her arms as though the chill in the night air is the problem.</p><p>“Between your body and my leg, we paid for the knowledge of the Gate and whatever life was in that thing we transmuted."</p><p>“How did you fix it? My body?” Alice is trembling like she knows she doesn’t want to know. She can’t even ask the question. Not that she should have to; gods, she’s so damn young. “Sister…you’re <em>so </em>different. What really happened in there? What did you do? How did you know what to do?”</p><p>El claws for a starting point. If she can force herself to start, she knows the whole sordid mess will come spilling out of her. The sooner she can manage that the better. If Al thinks that she lied to her, that she tried to hide this…it would make everything so much worse.</p><p>“The simple explanation is that I’ve done this before. I—Al, I’m not who you think I am,” El says, before shaking her head. “I mean, no, sorry that came out wrong. What I mean is, I’m not the same version of Elinor Elric that went into the Gate.”</p><p>“What does that mean?”</p><p>It means, that there had been two Elinor Elrics back there. And they'd been stuck like a cork in a bottle. Wedged into that liminal space that somehow existed within the soul and throughout the universe.</p><p>It means that the Truth couldn't let two Elinor Elrics exist outside the Gate. Not for any length of time. No more than it could let two Heba Sinclairs exist.</p><p>El has learned her lesson. There is no equivalent for a human life. </p><p>It means, only one of them could've made it out.</p><p>El had only had five seconds to make an impossible choice.</p><p>She’d saved Alice. Re-transmuted her body out of the Gate. Elinor might have been down a leg but she’d’ve been fine with that if it meant her sister was all right.</p><p>But.</p><p>If Elinor didn’t need to start her hunt for a way to get Al’s body back, she’d never take Mustang’s offer and join the military.</p><p>If she didn’t join the military, in a little less than five years, the homunculi would've found them. Hunted them down as sacrifices to power the nationwide array. El and Al would've been completely oblivious to the danger they were in. The bastard Colonel and his team might never have gathered the evidence to figure out what was going on. Even if they did, the homunculi or the brass would've had them silenced. Killed. All except Roy.</p><p>And that would have been the end of everyone and everything El had ever loved and fought to protect. Plus, or minus a couple million innocent people.</p><p>El couldn’t let that happen. Not when she had the means to stop it. The fucking Truth knew it too. Had known it when it made the bargain.</p><p>The choice was part of the fucking toll. </p><p>If El had let the clock run down, she might have been stuck there in the endless white forever.</p><p>Or she might have died. Her soul moving on to wherever souls went when they passed beyond the reach of the Gate.</p><p>Instead, she’d chosen to co-opt her younger self’s Gate and escape. Using her younger body as a Stone to fuel the transmutation and prevent the paradox. And the younger Elinor had faded into nothingness. </p><p>It means that El had taken young Elinor’s Gate and used it to preserve her own existence. The same way she’d used the Phase Alchemist to give Alice back her body.</p><p>Not that she was about to say any of that. Not to Al.</p><p>“It means…I didn’t change because of the Gate. Or not only because of the Gate, anyway,” El says, pleased that her voice doesn’t shake. “I lived ten years past this day and I grew up the usual way. And then another alchemist kidnapped me and stuffed me into a time-travel array.  The only way out was through the open Gates.”</p><p>“Someone kidnapped you!”</p><p>“I was fine,” El says, even though it’s not exactly true.</p><p>Sinclair had had her by the metaphorical balls, but fuck if she’s going to admit it.</p><p>“There have been rumours for years about how I got my automail. About the truth behind my ability to use alchemy without a circle. Rumours that I’d survived human transmutation. This alchemist, she'd lost her family. She was desperate to get them back. I guess she thought that because the Gate kept spitting me out, I’d make a better bargain than someone off the street. It wasn’t a bad idea. Conceptually, I mean. Circumventing the natural laws that way. Obviously, human transmutation is always a shitty life choice. But, if she’d done it right after they’d died, come up with enough of a toll, not tried to pass through the Gate. She would’ve succeeded. But ten years and three lives, it’s a lot of reality to bend and her circle was a mess.”</p><p>“Gate…” mused Al. “You keep saying that…You mean, in that place.  The big stone door with the Tree of Life carved into the front?”</p><p>“That’s it,” El agreed. “Every alchemist has a Gate inside them. The Gate allows us to do alchemy and it’s attached, I guess, sort of, to our souls. Our souls, yours and mine, connected, the first time this happened. When we gave our blood as soul data to the array, and activated it at the same time, our souls crossed. Our Gates became connected. Since then we've had a kind of back door into each other’s soul. Anyway, Sinclair forced the Truth to open a crack between the two times and hold there. Which is the kind of shit that can destabilize the fabric of reality. So, the Truth used me to close it and I was able to bargain for forty-seconds for myself."</p><p>"And you used it to get my body back...because you weren't able to right away, before. How...?"</p><p>"The first time, I was able to trade for your soul and bind it to a non-living body. A suit of armour. It took me a long time to figure out how to get your actual body out of the Gate. I didn't want you to have to go through that again," El explains. "Sinclair crossed our souls, hers and mine, in her transmutation, by being sloppy. In that liminal space, her Gate opened up into my younger self’s Gate which opened up into your Gate.”</p><p>Alice nods like that makes sense.</p><p>It doesn't. It makes no fucking sense to El, in particular. Souls should be well-rooted to their corresponding bodies, period, in her opinion. But that was the way things were.</p><p>“I was able to make that bargain and restore your body with the energy from Sinclair and her Gate and the extra time. And then, when it was over, I didn’t go back. I came through.”</p><p>That was good. Nice and euphemistic.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Al isn’t an idiot, not even close, not even at ten. And if she asks, if the words: ‘<em>Where is my sister</em>?’ come out of her mouth…well, El is going to have to tell her.</p><p>Maybe Al realizes that. It's possible she’s already figured out what El’s not saying. But she looks at El with her too-big eyes and she doesn’t ask. She grips El’s hand a little tighter, wiggles a little closer. Hangs on. But doesn't ask.</p><p>El hates herself for being grateful.</p><p>Add it to the fucking list.</p><p>“What are we going to do now?” Al asks, after a while.</p><p>That’s a good question. And also, another thing El doesn’t want to think about.</p><p>El’s been not-thinking about that one since her Alice had finished her rehabilitation. As soon as Granny and Winston had cleared her, she'd run off to Xing to learn healing alkahestry from May Chang. And how to be terrifying when you’re no longer an invulnerable suit of armor from Lan Fan.</p><p>And once Al hadn’t needed her anymore and she’d been at loose ends.</p><p>She’s been moving from insurmountable problem to impossible goal her whole life. Or close enough. </p><p>Not having that goal, that drive it'd been hard.  Sure, she was still helping a certain bastard General when he called so he could earn back his money. But it hadn’t ever felt like enough. </p><p>She’d bounced around Creta for a bit. Helped out with a covert thing in Aerugo that she wasn’t allowed to talk about. After two years of that, she'd admitted defeat. Migrated back to Central. Picked up some part-time jobs. Took some classes at the University. Taught some other classes at the University.</p><p>And, sometimes, the General would call and they’d go out, somewhere out of the way, for dinner or drinks. Usually, he’d have a mission, or a rare treatise on obscure alchemy for her to work on.  And afterwards she’d be almost alright again for a few weeks, days or hours.</p><p>She wonders if he’s discovered she’s missing yet.</p><p>Wonders if that version of him even exists anymore, or if all that time unravelled with El’s choice.</p><p>Wishes she’d taken more physics last semester.</p><p>Doesn’t laugh at herself, because if she starts laughing, she might devolve into ugly crying. The last thing Alice needs is her losing her shit on her right now.</p><p>“For now, we need sleep,” El says, cause holy-fuck is that true. “Tomorrow we’ll go see Granny and Winston and tell them what happened.”</p><p>Alice makes a face like she can already guess how well that’s gonna go.</p><p>“They’re going to be angry.”</p><p>“Yep,” agrees El. “And for good reason too. We were stupid. We were fu—flipping lucky enough the first time that it didn’t kill us both. The fact that neither of us is bleeding out this time is a god-damn blessed miracle. I have learned that the sooner you admit you fucked up, the fewer tears and wrenches get involved.”</p><p>That earns El a little chuckle that settles in her chest like the warm flicker of a candle flame. </p><p>“Sister?”</p><p>“Yeah, Al?”</p><p>“It’s warm enough to stay here for the night, right?”</p><p>El thinks about the satisfaction she felt when the house caught fire. Thinks about the slow squirm of purple tendrils rising from the edges of their transmutation. Thinks about them ripping her sister to molecular shreds.</p><p>Yeah. She can think of a couple real-good reasons for Al to be leery of sleeping in the house.</p><p>The porch swing has a cushion on it, and the nights are mild in Resembool even in early October.</p><p>“Sure thing, kiddo,” she says. “Budge up, I’m not as short as I used to be.”</p><p>They get settled. El with her automail leg hanging over the edge of the swing and Al curled up on top of her.</p><p>And whether it’s the exhaustion from the transmutation, the drugs lingering in her system, or the warm weight of her sister’s small body with its flesh, and blood, and working lungs, El falls asleep between one blink and the next. And doesn’t dream.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Many thanks to everyone who read, commented, dropped kudos and/or subscribed! Hope you enjoy the update!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Plan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, they stall.</p><p>El makes flapjacks with thin slices of apple in them, and transmutes the clumpy sugar in the sugar pot into golden syrup because she <em>can</em>.</p><p>Al drinks milk.</p><p>El digs up some stale grinds and the percolator out of the cupboard and drinks black coffee.</p><p>They don’t talk about the night before and it hangs between them like a gossamer curtain. So thin that it’s practically insubstantial, but also undeniably there.</p><p>They wash the breakfast dishes. Then they wash all the dinner dishes that Alice ferrets out of the far reaches of the house. Some of those have mould on them. One is a bright, fluffy toxic looking orange.</p><p>El remembers from her classes that the spores for this particular mould lives on human skin.</p><p>Al decides she needs a shower after that revelation.</p><p>El alchemizes her clothes clean. Again, because she <em>can</em>; and washes her hair in the sink. She braids it into a long, wet rope that soaks through the back of her shirt. She remembers she knows how to alchemize away the excess water and revels a little in how easy it is. </p><p>She teaches Al the trick and watches her cautiously press her hands together for the first time.</p><p>Al forgets to account for the static. El throws her head back and laughs at her when her short hair sticks up in wild spikes.</p><p>Yep, stalling.</p><p>They are both pros.</p><p>“Okay,” El sighs. “Get your shoes on. We’ve got crow to eat.”</p><p>Alice sighs even more heavily but she slips on her shoes without complaint.</p><p>They cut through the orchard rather than taking the road because El has decided they’re doing this now. She wants it done and over with.</p><p>The Rockbell House is not quite how El remembers it. It's a little smaller and the porch needs a new rail and a coat of paint. It takes her a long moment to remember they haven’t put the addition on for Winston’s personal workshop yet.</p><p>Den stands up and barks to announce their arrival. He hurries down the steps, automail claws clicking, to wag his tail at them and sniff around El’s boots.</p><p>El scritches him behind the ears, and lets him lead the way up to the house.</p><p>Alice stops her before she can rap her knuckles against the door frame and barge in.</p><p>“Maybe I should go first,” she suggests.</p><p>El grimaces. But, yeah, Al’s right, as usual. Walking into the Rockbell house unannounced would be rude. Rudeness would give them a less than optimal start to this conversation. And that was before considering that El looked like a complete stranger.</p><p>“Go for it,” El offers, standing back.</p><p>Alice pushes the screen door open.</p><p>“Granny? Win?” she calls.</p><p>“Kitchen!” Winston calls back, voice muffled.</p><p>Five-hundred cens says he has a screwdriver in his mouth. Workaholic automail freak.</p><p>Alice leads the way through the front room and into the Rockbells’ bare-bones kitchen.</p><p>“So,” she says, her voice high. “Don’t freak out, but um, something happened.”</p><p>El resists the urge to slap a hand over her face because, not helpful. But, seriously? Al should know better than to lead with: ‘<em>Don’t freak out</em>.’</p><p>Sure enough, Granny and Winston, look up, alarmed. And holy shit. Win is so small and adorable.</p><p>His hair sticks up in all directions. He's got freckles speckling his child-round face under a pair of too-big safety glasses.</p><p>It by-passes hilarity and hits her right in her gooey centre.</p><p>Ugh, feelings.</p><p>As predicted, he has a screwdriver in his mouth. It looks like Granny is supervising him through calibrating a circuit. A hip replacement, if she had to guess, but El’s no expert.</p><p>Granny gives Al a quick once over. A transparent up-down eye-flick. It's enough to register her guilty expression, and rule out any injuries.</p><p>“Alice, who is this?” Granny asks. “Where’s your sister?”</p><p>"Um, well, that's the thing," Al starts, glancing over her shoulder at El. "Um, this person is my sister."</p><p>“Hey Granny,” El says, waving.</p><p>Granny squints at her.</p><p>“Elinor?” she asks, shrill and incredulous.</p><p>El has a sudden flippant, self-destructive urge to say: ‘The one and only.’ Or. ‘This is only about sixty-nine percent my fault this time, I swear!’</p><p>She stows that shit, because, <em>really</em> brain? Not fucking helpful.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s me,” she says instead, slipping her hands into her back pockets.</p><p>“Elinor Elric, what did you <em>do</em>?” Granny snaps.</p><p>"It's a little hard to explain," El says, still not quite sure how to bring the discussion around to time-travel. "But in short we, uh, <em>did</em> human transmutation."</p><p>"Oh, Elinor you stupid girl!" Granny rasps. "What were you thinking? Or were you even thinking at all?"</p><p>“It’s not just El’s fault,” Al is quick to jump in.</p><p>“I’m sure,” Granny says, spitting mad. “But I know enough to know it was her idea.”</p><p>“That’s not fair!” Al shouts.</p><p>Her voice cracks like a whip. El and Win both startle.</p><p>“It’s wasn’t only El’s idea. It was my idea too. Just because El was the first one to say it out loud doesn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking about it right from the beginning.”</p><p>“Al…”</p><p>Angry tears are gathering at the corners of her eyes, and El shoots a helpless glance at Granny. Not sure where this is coming from. Alice rarely raises her voice. She’s always been plenty able to make herself heard without shouting. Even at ten.</p><p>“You’re not the bad sister!” Al says sharply. “You never have been. When bad things happen it’s not always your fault!”</p><p>Ah. That makes more sense.</p><p>“It’s not yours either,” El says.</p><p>“But it is!” Al sobs. “You had to come get me! If you didn’t have to do that you would have been <em>fine</em>!”</p><p>El gathers her up in her arms.</p><p>“That’s not how it works, baby sister,” she murmurs into her hair. “If I couldn’t go after you there’s no chance I’d’ve been fine.”</p><p>Over top of her head Granny gives El a helpless look, all the anger draining out of her, leaving something grim and resigned in its wake.</p><p>“Fools!” she says, tugging out a chair for herself and dropping into it.  “Human transmutation. I’m no alchemist, but even I know that it's forbidden. And worse, that attempts kill the alchemists more often than not!”</p><p>Winston makes a noise at that. His blue eyes round and watery.</p><p>El winces.  </p><p>“We were stupid,” she agrees. “Stupid, arrogant and blind."</p><p>That first time especially.</p><p>"We ignored all the warnings, all the signs, and our better judgement. We decided we knew better than everyone who came before us. That if they'd been smarter, they could have figured out how to make it work.  We convinced ourselves that we were smarter, better, more talented. Well, of course we were wrong. But we were too obsessed with getting back what we lost to see what we still had right in front of us.”</p><p>Alice tries to compose herself. Sniffling in the, now damp and humid, crook of El’s neck.  El squeezes her a little tighter.</p><p>Granny sighs and picks up her pipe, taking a long drag.</p><p>“Elinor, you could at least let me yell a bit before you start proving that you’ve learned your lesson.”</p><p>“Sorry, Granny,” El says.</p><p>“I suppose if you hadn’t learned it by now, though, yelling about it wouldn’t do any good,” Granny relents. “You failed I assume, to resurrect Trisha.” </p><p>El lets one corner of her mouth tick upward, wry.</p><p>"It's impossible to bring the dead back to life," she says. "Human transmutation can create or modify a body, for a price, but there's no equivalent for a human soul."</p><p>"Is that what your circle did, then? Modified your body so that it was older?"</p><p>"Ah, no, that's a bit more complicated to explain. I’m actually the El Elric from ten years in the future," El says. "Basically, I got caught by a rogue alchemist and forced into an array that bends time. Had to take the back way out to escape."</p><p>While Granny and Winston are processing that little nugget, El sits down at the table, Al in her lap.</p><p>“Sister…fixed, the damage that the transmutation did to us on her way through,” Alice put in.</p><p>El pulls a face.</p><p>“Fixed is kind of a strong word,” she says. “More like I paid to have it repaired faster than I’d’ve been able to before.”</p><p>She doesn’t want to get into the specifics of Tolls, Gates and negotiating with the Truth.</p><p>She really doesn’t want anyone to bring up the question of what happened to her younger self.</p><p>She really, really doesn’t want to lie about it.</p><p>She really, really, really doesn’t want to tell the truth.</p><p>Granny taps her pipe against the table.</p><p>“What about this time travel nonsense? Is this…permanent?”</p><p>“As far as I know, yes,” El shrugs. “The transmutation was complete. I should be good and stuck. But I’m pretty sure 'this time travel nonsense' has never happened to anyone before.”</p><p>“Hmm," huffs Granny, chewing on the stem of her pipe. "Ten years you said?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ll, uh, be twenty-two in February,” El says.</p><p>She tries not to flinch when she says it.</p><p>Birthdays are starting to become a bit of a sore spot. Almost twenty-two and she still doesn't have her any of her shit together.</p><p>She clears her throat.</p><p>“I’m gonna need papers, an alias, some hardcore corroboration, eventually.”</p><p>Granny gives her a sharp look.</p><p>“Is there some reason you think people will be looking for your records?”</p><p>The old woman doesn’t miss a tick.</p><p>“Other than having already lived through it once, you mean,” says El.</p><p>Granny shoots her an unimpressed look.</p><p>“Ah, there’re a lot of people who’d like to lay hands on Hohenheim in the next five years or so. Al and I are pretty much the only link to the bastard. We sent out letters, after Mom died, to all his acquaintances looking for him. It drew the attention of some dangerous people," El explains. "They're looking for prodigiously talented alchemists."</p><p>“Sister?” Alice says.</p><p>Her face is white as a sheet. Shit.</p><p>El quirks a corner of her mouth and tries for reassuring.</p><p>“Don’t worry, the best of the bad bunch finds us first,” she says. “He should be here sometime today or tomorrow? I don’t remember the details all that well.”</p><p>Being hopped up on pain meds would do that.</p><p>Granny nods, resigned.</p><p>“All right then,” she says. “I can get in touch with an old friend and set you up with false papers that will pass a close inspection. God knows I’ve had to do the same for your father often enough over the years."</p><p>El blinks.</p><p>"We can set you up under his last alias, Lightbourne." Granny continues. "It's the name on your birth certificates. This way, if you ever need to take custody of Alice, you'll have the necessary documentation.”</p><p>That was easier than she’d expected.</p><p>“Huh,” says El. “I didn’t even know the bastard had aliases.”</p><p>She’d burned all the copies of official documents like their birth certificates down with the house.</p><p>“Dozens of them. He was always using a new one for as long as I’d known him. He was going by Hovan Lightbourne here in Resembool when he and your mother met. That's the name on their marriage licence as well. He insisted that she keep her last name and that the pair of you would be Elrics,” Granny explains. “I suppose if there are people looking for him, I finally understand why he’s always been so paranoid.”</p><p>That…made a lot of fucking sense actually.</p><p>Hohenheim had been hiding in plain sight for years. Then he'd been trying to divest himself of his immortality and find a way to defeat the Dwarf in the Flask. He'd need to avoid drawing the attention of the military. And the homunculi. And anyone chasing rumours of the Philosopher of the East and his miracle stone.</p><p>Of course, all that had made it impossible to find or contact the useless, cagey bastard in any way. Even if you were his own family. Maybe especially if you were his own family.</p><p>Hohenheim intended to stay away until he found the solution to his little problem. El had the impression that ending his life before her had to lose his wife and daughters had been his goal for years.</p><p>And the goal was more important than spending any of their remaining time together.</p><p>El takes a deep breath when she realizes she's grinding her teeth. She tries to force herself to relax. Turns out she's not over that shit. Who would've guessed?</p><p>Well, the bastard is still alive and out there somewhere. She’ll probably get the chance to punch him in the face and scream at him before he fucks off and dies on them again.</p><p>“Well,” says Granny. “I suppose the next question is, what do you intend to do next?”</p><p>Next?</p><p>El's barely thought through what she's going currently. Does Granny expect her to have her future plans all lined up already?</p><p>"Don't give me that look, Elinor," Granny huffs. "You came here, didn't you? You were looking for help to corroborate your identity. Whether you realize it or not, you intend for you identity to need corroboration. So, what are you plotting?"</p><p>El resists the urge to sputter, flail her arms, and insist she's doing no such thing.</p><p>She's not eleven any more and she does want Granny to start thinking of her as an adult.</p><p>Instead, she thinks about Granny's question.</p><p>Does she have a plan in play?</p><p>Well…sort of?</p><p>It’s complicated. She knows what's happening in this country. What's going to happen. What she'd like to happen instead. What she can live with doing to make that future work. But it's not a <em>plan</em>.</p><p>She’s just doing what she always does after a supreme fuck up. Getting up, dusting herself off, and moving the fuck forward.</p><p>So, what's in front of her? What does she have? What does she still need?</p><p>The answer populates in her brain automatically, like it was just waiting for her to ask.</p><p>She chews on her lip.  </p><p>Mustang.</p><p>That's the next step.</p><p>She's got to get Mustang on side.</p><p>His flame alchemy is one of the most effective weapons for handling homunculi. But what she really needs is his network of informants. His position and contacts within the military command structure.</p><p>Also, these days the bastard is something pretty damn close to a friend. Friends don't let friends become unwitting sacrifices to power world-destroying arrays. It's an unwritten rule. And she'd like to think that he'd come to her for help if he was in her position.</p><p>And like dominoes, the general outline of next steps falls into place.</p><p>She’ll go with Mustang. Join the military as a State Alchemist. Save Nina. Save Hughes. Protect Al, Win, and Granny. Destroy the homunculi. Destroy Father. Prevent the nationwide array from ever activating.</p><p>Easy-peasy.</p><p>"Okay, I've got something sort of resembling a plan," El admits, rubbing at her mouth. "You're not gonna like it."</p><p>"When do I ever," Granny retorts.</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re <em>really</em> not gonna like it this time,” El says. “It involves me sitting the next State Alchemist’s exam.”</p><p>Winston’s screwdriver clatters to the table, and Al sits up straight in her lap.</p><p>“Sister, <em>no</em>!”</p><p>“You want to join the <em>military</em>?”</p><p>“Do I want to? Not really, no. Not with Bradley in the commander’s seat. But it needs to be done,” El says.</p><p>“Elinor,” Granny says, leaning forward, urgent. “State Alchemists are the dogs of the military. Living weapons If there’s another war like Ishval you’ll be marched straight to the front lines and forced to kill people.”</p><p>“I know,” El says, glaring. “I know that better than anyone here. You all might hate the military, because of Ishval, but you don’t know the half of it. The people leading this country right now are leading it into hell. I’m not going to stand by and do nothing. I can’t.”</p><p>“Elinor, you—” Granny cuts herself off, face pinched, and then starts again. “It’s not your job to save everyone.”</p><p>“It is. If you knew what I know…if you’d seen the things I saw…”</p><p>El shakes her head.</p><p>“You are not <em>responsible</em>—”</p><p>“But I am! Alchemist, be thou for the people,” El intones.  “When you’re given the power to reshape the world, and you stand by and do nothing while bad things happen all around you, you’re the problem. Rage at injustice is universal. The ability to fight back is not. I have the ability to fight back. The duty to fight back!”</p><p>“And what about your sister?” Granny snaps, slamming a hand down on the table. “Isn’t her safety and happiness also your responsibility?”</p><p>El flinches.</p><p>She glances down at Al.</p><p>Gods, she so small. Ten years old and slender as a willow switch. She’s a good fighter. As good as El, thanks to Teacher’s spartan training program. But she’s flesh. Vulnerable. Mortal. In a way she hadn’t been the first time they’d set out on this semi-impossible quest.</p><p>Her safety is her responsibility.</p><p>Her first responsibility.</p><p>She’s been a big sister for longer than she’s been an alchemist after all.</p><p>But stopping the Dwarf in the Flask is just as important a duty.</p><p>More important, her own Alice would have argued.</p><p>It had never been fair, dragging her sister around after her while she’d trudged deeper and deeper into the mire of corruption. But Al had always been there anyway, and she’d never once said that she was wrong to keep walking.</p><p>But that Alice and this Alice are different people.</p><p>And El should be old enough to walk into hell without holding her sister’s hand.</p><p>Of course, the flip side of that is that Al is a child and needs someone to make decisions about what is best for her. If only because the centre for long-term planning in her brain isn’t fully developed.  And if Al isn’t with her, she will be vulnerable to the homunculi and to exploitation.</p><p>None of that changes the fact that El can’t <em>not</em> go down this path.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>El’s used to Al being one year younger and ten years more mature. She and her sister have always been equals. Making the decisions that affect both of them together.</p><p>That was part of why El had been so blind-sided when Al had gone off to Xing without her.</p><p>Though she supposes that decision wasn’t actually meant to affect both of them.</p><p>She’d just wished her sister had asked if she’d wanted to come, instead of assuming she didn’t.</p><p>Huh.</p><p>There’s an idea.</p><p>“Al could come with me, if she wanted,” El says, flicking her eyes between Granny and Al. “Not on missions or anything, but we could get an apartment in East City or Central, and Central University offers correspondence courses.”</p><p>Granny presses her lips into a flat line of disapproval.</p><p>Alice, though, is surprised and delighted.</p><p>“You’d want me to come with you?”</p><p>“Of course,” El says. “You’re my favourite person in the universe Al. I never don’t want you to come with me.”</p><p>Alice squirms until she’s turned around and throws her arms around El’s neck hard enough to rock the chair back onto two legs.</p><p>“Thank you, Sister.”</p><p>“Okay,” El says, swallowing around the sudden lump in her throat. “So. There we go. That’s the plan. End of the month, I’ll go to Central to write the exam and get my assignment. I’ll be gone maybe a week? Then we can pack up and go apartment hunting.”</p><p>Al gives her a sharp nod.</p><p>And Granny sighs again.</p><p>“You two are as stubborn as your mother and twice as reckless,” she says tiredly. “I’ll tell you girls this only once and then hold my peace. There are a few things in this world that should matter more than anything else. Your family is one of them. Don’t be afraid to do whatever it takes to protect and come back to each other.”</p><p>“And to us,” Winston adds.</p><p>Granny cracks a smile for the first time that afternoon.</p><p>“Just so.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Wasn't sure how to wrap up this chapter so let me know what you guys think of the ending! Also apologies for the subscribers who got double notifications - there's not a fourth chapter, ch. 3 just got published twice because of internet shenaniganry!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments are love.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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